The University of Colorado Boulder has been ranked No. 14 in the world on the scholarly impact of its journal publications, according to an analysis by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The Leiden Ranking analyzed the 500 universities with the largest number of publications recorded in Web of Science, a database of articles published in more than 12,000 journals that is maintained by Thomson Reuters.

The impact of each university’s publications was measured based on how frequently the publications were cited compared with other studies published in the same field and in the same year.

“This ranking illustrates that our faculty are engaged in scientific research and studies that are being paid attention to,” said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “This demonstrates the impact of the research taking place at CU-Boulder.”

CU-Boulder’s No. 14 ranking is based on publications between 2008 and 2011. In the previous Leiden Ranking, which covered publications between 2005 and 2009, CU-Boulder was ranked No. 24.

For the purpose of the ranking, publications with authors from multiple institutions were awarded fractionally to each university. Using this system, CU-Boulder was credited with 4,701 publications in the most recent ranking. Of those, 18 percent were among the top 10 percent of most-cited publications in their field.

The top-ranked university in the 2013 Leiden Ranking was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had 8,988 publications, 25 percent of which were in the top 10 percent of their field. Second through fifth places in the ranking went to the University of California, Santa Barbara; Stanford; Princeton; and Harvard, respectively.

Quotes

“This ranking illustrates that our faculty are engaged in scientific research and studies that are being paid attention to,” said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “This demonstrates the impact of the research taking place at CU-Boulder.”